Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The article below describes a survey done in Israel, in 5 cities, by Eli Ungar-Sargon and his wife Sharon. This was part of their work on a documentary on the Israel/Palestine conflict.The survey provides substantiation for the following: 1- Anti-Arab sentiment is a mainstream phenomenon in Israel. 2- More racism among the very young. 3- Support for a 2 state solution (when this involves handing back territory) is really low. 4- In reality, attitudes are likely worse than the conclusions of this survey.While the survey is not "scientific", and some of the criteria set by those who conducted it are questionable, IMO, I think it's interesting and of value.

In addition to the article, there is a video clip that gives a glimpse into the responses given.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Josh Ruebner who works with "The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation" has done some digging into the matter of US congress representatives trips to Israel. 81 reps. - nearly 20% of the house - are participating in all expenses paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) "a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits."Looking into the connections between AIEF and AIPAC, Ruebner exposed the fact that AIEF seems to be a front group for AIPAC, not an independent entity, and that as such - has no legal right to organize such trips.

Based on these revelations, CODEPINK has filed a formal complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee, calling for an investigation of these junkets.

Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson's congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs.

During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits.

In total, 81 representatives, nearly one-fifth of the entire House, will participate in these jaunts, which, according to The Washington Post, include "a round-trip flight in business class for lawmakers and their spouses (that alone is worth about $8,000), fine hotels and meals, side trips, and transportation and guides."

Of course, these congressional delegations are not all fun and games. Members of Congress will be expected to sing for their lavish dinners by honoring President Bush's 2007 pledge to provide the Israeli military with $30 billion of tax-payer-funded weapons between 2009 and 2018. So far, proposed increases in military aid to Israel have been spared from the budgetary chopping block by President Obama and a compliant Congress that treats Israeli militarism as more sacrosanct than medical care for seniors. This despite the fact that Israel misuses the funds, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians living under its illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

According to aidtoisrael.org, constituents in Illinois' 2nd congressional district will be asked to cough up an astonishing $53 million in federal taxes as their pound of flesh for the Israeli military during this 10-year period. With this same amount of money, each year the federal government instead could give 650 low-income families housing vouchers, or retrain nearly 900 unemployed workers for green jobs, or fund early reading programs for nearly 1,600 at-risk children, or provide primary health care to more than 43,000 uninsured people in Rep. Jackson's congressional district.

Yali Amit, an Israeli-American constituent of Rep. Jackson, Jr. called his office to oppose his participation in the trip to Israel. He was told that Rep. Jackson, Jr. wants to learn what is happening there because of his position on the appropriations subcommittee that approves military aid to Israel. Amit retorted that "you can't learn what goes on there on a paid trip of a propaganda arm of the Israeli government." And you certainly can't learn about the devastating impact that these U.S. weapons have on unarmed Palestinian civilians, nearly 3,000 of whom were killed by the Israeli military over the last decade.

The House Committee on Ethics should open an investigation to determine if it is even legal for Members of Congress to be participating in junkets organized by AIEF. The guidelines of the committee are as bright and clear as the midday sun on a Tel Aviv beach in August. "The travel provisions of the gift rule severely limit the ability of Members and staff to accept travel from an entity that employs or retains a registered lobbyist or a registered agent of a foreign principal." (Emphasis in original.)

Legistorm, which tracks congressional travel, explains that "even though AIPAC's primary purpose is lobbying, its nonprofit arm [AIEF] appears to provide a loophole for sponsored travel." However, this eureka loophole that AIPAC uses does not withstand scrutiny. According to the latest publicly available tax return of AIEF, the organization has no paid employees -- an astounding feat in itself for an organization that raked in more than $26 million in 2009 and a mind-blowing accomplishment for an organization running three huge congressional delegations in one month.

An examination of AIPAC's latest publicly available tax return reveals the sleight of hand. AIPAC reports that in 2009, it very generously contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF. In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft the new post-Abramoff federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees that something is rotten in state of AIPAC. According to Holman, "The House ethics rules do not provide an exemption for 501(c)(3)s that are controlled and directed by a lobbying entity to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. When the ethics rules were written in 2007 as part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), an exemption for 501(c)(3)s was written into the Senate rules – which I called the 'AIPAC' loophole – but the House under Speaker Pelosi stuck to strict travel rules for its members and declined to poke a comparable loophole into its ethics rules.

"Even if there were such a loophole in House rules," Holman continues, "which there isn't, it appears that the 501(c)(3) wing of AIPAC is little more than a front group designed to extend its lobbying activities beyond Capitol Hill. From 2000 to 2006, lobbyist Richard Kessler similarly attempted to evade the ethics rule prohibiting lobbyist- sponsored travel junkets by setting up a 501(c)(3) that he directly controlled to pay for the trips. HLOGA was passed in 2007 to end these types of evasions."

Constituents should be irate that members of Congress accept fancy trips from AIPAC-affiliates and contributions from AIPAC-inspired political action committee (PACs) that result in the United States prioritizing weapons to Israel above our basic economic rights. And the Committee on Ethics must investigate AIPAC's skirting of travel regulations and shut down these trips that it has until now allowed.

The peace group CODEPINK has filed a formal complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee, calling for an investigation of the junkets to Israel paid for by the powerful Israel lobby AIPAC but channeled through their educational front group, The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF). This summer recess, a staggering 81 Congresspeople—one out of five members—are participating in these trips.

According to the House Ethics Rules, Congress is prohibited from participating in any multiple-day trip that is planned, organized, requested, or arranged by a lobbyist. AIPAC skirts the law by funneling the trips through AIEF.

According to the latest publicly available tax returns, in 2009 AIEF did not even have paid staff, relying on AIPAC employees to do its work. AIPAC contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF in 2009. In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot legally be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.

"AIPAC barely tries to hide that fact that AIEF is a front group," says CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin, who filed the complaint. "The groups are housed in the same offices, have overlapping boards of directors, share staff, employ the same Chief Financial Officer and are constantly moving funds from one entity to another. It's time for Congress to put an end to this charade by closing the AIPAC loophole."

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees. "The House ethic rules do not allow a non-profit group like AIEF, which is controlled and directed by the lobby group AIPAC, to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. This AIPAC loophole is rendering the travel rules meaningless and should be stopped," says Holman.

"With constituents facing severe economic hardships, Representatives should be home in their districts during this August recess to tell voters how they will dig us out the mess they've created," says Josh Ruebner, the national advocacy director at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. "Instead many of them are spending part of their recess in Israel on a lobbyist-funded trip, being pressured into even more tax-payer-funded weapons for the Israeli military, weapons used to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians."

CODEPINK, which organizes citizen diplomacy delegations to Israel and Palestine, including Gaza, believes these AIPAC trips give the participants a skewed view that hides the oppressive nature of the Israeli government. "The trips are designed to push the U.S. Congress into supporting AIPAC policies of unconditional support for the Israel government, such as continuing to give $3 billion of our taxdollars to Israel and vetoing the upcoming Palestinian call for statehood at the UN," said Benjamin. "AIPAC puts the interests of Israel before U.S. interests, which makes these Congressional junkets dangerous and downright un-American."

Friday, August 12, 2011

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a long time peace activist and an academic, has just got her book "Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education" published by I.B. Tauris. Part of the publisher's description of the book: "She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.

This conclusion isn't exactly news. Each one of us who has been through the Israeli educational system has experienced this. But for someone like me, whose indoctrination had taken place in the mid-fifties and the 60's, it's of great interest to see what has happened later on. I haven't read the book yet, but my strong impression is that for the most part things have gotten much worse.

I'd also like to note the irony of this, in light of the constant complaint that it's the Palestinian educational system that's based on entrenched racism, which is the cause for the alleged deep hatred Palestinians harbor towards anything and everything Jewish.

Below you'll find a short interview with Nurit Peled-Elhanan, as well as an article by Omar Barghouthi describing what the book is about.

This insightful research by respected Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan will confirm what Palestinian researchers have always known: Israel's prevailing culture of racism, fundamentalism, support for war crimes, and apartheid against Palestinians is mainly a product of an educational system that indoctrinates Jewish-Israeli students with militant colonial values and extreme racism that turn them into "monsters" once in uniform.

"Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.

"People don't really know what their children are reading in textbooks," she said. "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians."

In "hundreds and hundreds" of books, she claims she did not find one photograph that depicted an Arab as a "normal person". The most important finding in the books she studied – all authorised by the ministry of education – concerned the historical narrative of events in 1948, the year in which Israel fought a war to establish itself as an independent state, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the ensuing conflict.

The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims."

Those who see this as an aberration of Zionism seem to lack sufficient understanding of what Zionism really is and the central role it plays as a patently racist ideology in justifying ethnic cleansing and racist domination over Palestinians.

One should not wonder then why, at the height of the Israeli massacre in Gaza 2008-09, a Tel Aviv University poll (reported in the Jerusalem Post, Jan. '09) of Jewish-Israeli opinion showed a shocking 94% support for the assault, despite full knowledge of the enormous suffering this Israeli aggression had inflicted upon the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the Gaza "prison camp" and of the massive destruction of their civilian infrastructure.

As in every other colonial system, only sustained and effective pressure from within as well as from without can put an end to this downward spiral of criminality, impunity and unspoken racism. More BDS is needed to end Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid. Other than the obvious benefits to indigenous Palestinians, suffering more than six decades of this three-tiered system of Israeli oppression, an end to this system of oppression may well transform most Israelis from colonial "monsters" into normal humans.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

There are 16 days left to reach the financial goal set by makers of this truly worthy project. Please consider helping - any amount will help. As someone who uses films a whole lot in my activist work, I can't wait to show this one...Racheli.

Here are some words from Dalit Baum:

***** Last push - let's try and make this happen, please send this email around...

Help us support this exciting new film project about Palestinian nonviolent resistance!The film maker, Connie Field, is an ally and a friend, and I have been using her amazing film "The Bottom Line" in my talks all around (about the campaigns around the world that targeted companies involved in Apartheid South Africa). It is one of the smartest, most precise and useful depictions of the anti-Apartheid movement, and she has had the film translated to Arabic and shown all around in Palestine and the middle east.Help Connie complete her new film, by donating as little as the price of a movie ticket, and earn access to the completed film online and much much more: http://kck.st/pf9XsE. If we get enough people to pledge a small donation,

The new project Follows a theater group on the road in the occupied West Bank, as it performs Clay Carson's play about Martin Luther King Jr. The performers, of the Palestinian National Theater and an African-American gospel choir, meet with realities on the ground and help introduce viewers of different backgrounds to the occupation, and to the Palestinian civil rights movement. The choir works with the Jenin Freedom Theater, and the project commemorates the Palestinian-Israeli actor and activist Juliamo Mer Khamis who was assassinated during the tour.

As a global, glowing movement, we can support our films ourselves. This one is sure to become a powerful tool for us as a movement, and to help introduce us to many new audiences.

Please pledge as little as $1 online: http://kck.st/pf9XsEand help us spread the word - LIKE the website on facebook, SHARE with your friends, and forward this mail to your mailing lists.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

"Real News" piece on the Israeli demonstrations.A comment from Joel Beinin: Impressive. Something is happening, but too soon to tell what. They want me to lecture about Egypt on Thursday at the Rothschild camp-out (the most yuppie). The numbers in this report are somewhat inflated. But the original call for "Tahrir, Jihad" (see recent MERO) seems to be catching on. But note the Israeli flags (absent in Jerusalem on July 15 by prior agreement). And the Director General of the Treasury didn't quit at Bibi's request, but as a protest against the pig-headed approach of the Minister, Yuval Steinitz, who may yet be thrown under the bus.

And then an excellent piece by Joel about the influence of the Arab Awakening on both Israelis and Palestinians.Joel Beinin: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Arab Awakening August 1, 2011http://www.merip.org/mero/mero080111

Writing a few days later:In the meantime, demonstrations in Israel have been growing in size. It's estimated that about 300,000 people demonstrated yesterday (Aug. 6), in various locales across Israel.Here is an additional piece by Abir Kopty, describing the massive demonstrations and encampments from the point of view of a Palestinian. The essence of her message is: "Social justice can't be divided or categorized. If it is not justice to all including all Palestinians, then it is a fake justice, elite justice or "Justice for Jews only" exactly as the Israeli democracy functions "for Jews only". July 14 is a great opportunity for Israelis to refuse to allow their state to continue to drown into an apartheid regime."Whether Israeli Jews will seize on this opportunity or not still remains to be seen.

If you are Palestinian, it will be difficult to find anything to identify with in Tel Aviv's tents' city on Rothschild Boulevard, until you reach Tent 1948. My first tour there was a few days ago, when I decided to join Tent 1948. Tent 1948's main message is that social justice should be for all. It brings together Jewish and Palestinian citizens who believe in shared sovereignty in the state of all its citizens.

For me, as a Palestinian, I don't feel part of the July 14 movement, and I'm not there because I feel part. Almost every corner of this encampment reminds me that this place does not want me. My first tour there was pretty depressing, I found lots of Israeli flags, a man giving a lecture to youth about his memories from '48 war' from a Zionist perspective, another group marching with signs calling for the release of Gilad Shalit, another singing Zionist songs. This is certainly not a place that the 20% of the population would feel they belong to. The second day I found Ronen Shuval, from Im Tirtzu, the extreme right wing organization, giving a talk full of incitement and hatred to the left and human rights organizations. Settlers already set a tent and were dancing with joy.

The existence of Tent 1948 in the encampment constitutes a challenge to people taking part in the July 14 movement. In the first few days, the tent was attacked by group of rightwing activists, who beat activists in the tent and broke down the Palestinian flag of the tent. Some of the leaders of the July 14 movement have said clearly that raising core issues related to Palestinian community in Israel or the occupation will make the struggle "lose momentum". They often said the struggle is social, not political, as if there was a difference. They are afraid of losing supporters if they make Palestinian issues bold.

The truth is that this is the truth.

The truth is, this is exactly what might help Netanyahu, if he presses the button of fear, recreates the 'enemy' and reproduce the 'security threat', he might be able to silence this movement. The problem is not with Netanyahu, he is not the first Israeli leader to rely on this. The main problem is that Israelis are not ready yet to see beyond the walls surrounding them.

Yet, one has to admit, something is happening, Israelis are awakening. There is a process; people are coming together, discussing issues. The General Assembly of the encampment decided on Friday that it will not accept any racist messages among its participants. Even to Tent 1948 many Israelis arrived, read the flyers, listened to what Tent 1948 represent and discussed calmly. Perhaps if I was a Jewish Israeli I will be proud of the July 14 movement. But, I am not a Jew, I am not Zionist, I am Palestinian.

I don't want to beatify the reality, or hide anything for the sake of 'tactics' and I will not accept crumbs. I want to speak about historical justice, I want to speak about occupation, I want to speak about discrimination and racism, I want to put everything on the table, and I want to speak about them in the heart of Tel Aviv.

Social justice can't be divided or categorized. If it is not justice to all including all Palestinians, then it is a fake justice, elite justice or "Justice for Jews only" exactly as the Israeli democracy functions "for Jews only". July 14 is a great opportunity for Israelis to refuse to allow their state to continue to drown into an apartheid regime.

Abir Kopty blogs here. Follow her twitter feed @abirkopty. A media analyst and consultant and political activist, she is a former city council member in Nazareth & former spokeswoman for Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel.